


a void three inches to the side of your heart

by inverse



Category: Kuroko no Basuke | Kuroko's Basketball
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-19
Updated: 2013-08-19
Packaged: 2017-12-23 23:53:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,410
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/932573
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/inverse/pseuds/inverse
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>kuroko is kagami's shadow.</p>
            </blockquote>





	a void three inches to the side of your heart

**Author's Note:**

> written for bps challenge 32, horror. not so much horror as it is a supernatural love story. shamelessly inspired by [this song](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZxL-b09VBWw).

“My name is Kuroko, and I am your shadow” are the first words that he says to Kagami. In retrospect, there was no need to have said that. Kagami’s knowledge of his presence was completely unnecessary for him to have continued being Kuroko’s host. But Kagami had become aware, over the weeks, over the months, that something was wrong. One night, when he is alone at home, as usual, his paranoia gets the better of him. He flinches when lightning flashes outside his window, due to a thunderstorm, and the light casts illusions on the furniture in his room. He thinks he sees something move, so he asks, terrified, “Who’s there?” And so Kuroko replies, wanting to alleviate Kagami’s anxiety, but maybe that’s a bad decision. Kagami blacks out.

Kuroko is a spirit that possesses shadows. He has been one for as long as he can remember, so long that he can hardly remember what he looked like when he was alive. He moves from host to host as they expire – Kagami is his sixth – and he’s long figured out that he doesn’t have that much of an effect on the lifespan of each host he shacks up with, so if he’s lucky, he gets to stay in one place for fifty years or longer, until they grow old and weak. Spirits like him don’t need much maintenance anyway. He just has to seep into someone’s shadow to continue existing. He can possess the shadows of animals and plants, too, all living things, but those of humans are ideal. He used to be one, after all.

Kagami wakes up the next morning, rubbing the sore spot on his head where he’d hit it while collapsing. It is a Saturday morning, and Kuroko has been watching his face from up close for hours now, where the sunlight hits Kagami and his shadow spills out like ink right next to his body. He sleeps like a log. This Kuroko is aware of.

“Last night …” Kagami says to himself, wincing and trying to recall, “something spoke –”

"I’m still here," Kuroko pipes up despite himself, and Kagami stares at the black, distorted shape lying next to him in fascinated horror. Kuroko stares back as hard as he can, even though Kagami cannot possibly know.

 

*

 

They might have gotten off to a bad start, but Kagami’s curiosity ends up getting the better of him. He sits in his own bedroom, back to the window, so that he’s staring at the face of his shadow as it looms across the floor, the shape of the hair sitting atop of it the same as his own. He asks Kuroko a few questions – where he’s from, what he is, why he’s here.

“What did you look like?”

“Pale, I think. People never really noticed me.”

“Must be right. You have a pretty soft voice.”

“But I know I was tall.”

“As tall as I am?”

Kagami is incredibly tall for his age. He loves basketball. He plays in his school team, and when he’s not at school, he practises by himself, at a street court near his home. That’s how much he loves it. He spends every waking moment thinking about it. Sometimes when the sun shines through the windowpanes in the right angle, Kuroko is able to lie across Kagami’s desk in class, instead of on the floor, and see what he’s been up to. Everything that Kagami has written in his notebooks is about basketball. Doodles of miniature basketballs, stick men dunking into crudely-drawn hoops, the number of days to the next big regional tournament. Sometimes he doodles, too, when Kuroko is lying in that position, so it feels like he’s scratching his dreams and hopes into Kuroko’s skin with a sharp-tipped pencil, if Kuroko had skin, and if he could feel.

He’s great at jumping high, too. Basketball did not exist in Kuroko’s time, so it is something that he has come to know of only recently. Kagami’s seniors all rely on him during games, and seem to like him a lot. Kuroko never leaves the ground, and in fact hasn’t done so for what feels like an eternity, so it feels like Kagami is getting away from him when he flies that high to toss the ball into the basket, becoming smaller and further away. It is a frightening thought, to be separated from an entity which you are part of. He also thinks, however, that he is lucky to be able to witness all this. Kagami is awe-inducing, when he jumps with all his might.

“I’d feel bad for leaving you alone, now that I know you’re here,” Kagami says that night, preparing his own dinner while Kuroko watches, splayed over a familiar kitchen counter. No one’s ever said that to Kuroko, but that’s only because he’s never made his presence known before.

“I don’t mind. It’s always been this way.”

“You know when I asked you what you looked like?” Kagami asks later, chewing as he watches a basketball game on television. The food he’s cooked looks delicious, and Kuroko wishes he could eat, like always. “Because it feels like I’m talking to myself. It’s my own shadow after all, the shape, everything. It’s easy to see my own face talking back. But you’re nothing like me, so I just need to put a face to it. I guess your voice helps. I always thought that if my shadow could talk, or if it could move, it’d be exactly like me. A mirror image of myself.”

Kuroko isn’t corporeal, does not have a heart nor lungs, neither flesh nor form. But he is very real, and he can think, and he exists. He insists that he really does, even if he can’t be seen or touched, and Kagami believes him.

“I know, I know. That’s why I said I wanted to know what you looked like.” Kuroko is glad. He wants Kagami to know that he is there.

“You know, Kuroko,” Kagami continues, “when did you actually start – living here?”

“Just a few days before I spoke to you,” Kuroko lies, so that it doesn’t sound like he’s been lurking silently around Kagami for months, observing him until the need to speak up became necessary. It’s easy to do so anyway. Nothing can give him away.

 

*

 

Kagami is, contrary to his appearance, unexpectedly cowardly. It’s a little bit of why Kuroko had called out to him in the first place. The time he first meets Kuroko aside (which Kuroko thinks is a legitimate reason to be frightened), he scares easily; he always thinks that there are ghosts around, and he is terrified of dogs, especially when he’s walking home alone in his quiet neighbourhood. But he’s grown to become comfortable around Kuroko, who’s become somewhat of an exception. He lives by himself, so it can get scary sometimes, even for someone like Kagami, who looks well-built.

These days he walks better and sleeps better, though, just mere weeks after he gets to know that someone, or something, is always with him. The reason why Kuroko ever reached out to Kagami in the first place was because it was the first time that he’d possessed someone who spent so much of his free time alone. To know that he has had such an effect is rather comforting.

“I forgot to ask you, Kuroko,” Kagami asks one night, just before going to bed. “Whatever possessed you to speak to me for the very first time? You said you never talked to anyone before, not like this.”

“I wanted to reassure you,” Kuroko says, truthfully this time. “You did seem terrified by the storm.”

“Ahh, that’s embarrassing. I’m not usually so timid,” Kagami replies, not knowing where to look. The room is already dark with the lights out. His expression is obscured by shadows not of his own. He continues, “Well, goodnight then,” and pulls his quilt over himself.

Kuroko has been with many people, and he knows what one single person can go through in an entire lifetime. More or less, therefore, he knows that Kagami has a long way ahead of him, and that he himself has to move on to someone else someday. It’s too soon to think about that, however. Kagami is yet young. Kuroko watches him fall asleep, nestled in the folds of Kagami’s sheets like liquid mercury, enveloping him like somebody warm would. Shadows do not need to rest.


End file.
